Secrets are part of what binds spousal victims to abusers. When you break the secret silence you take a giant step out into the light and freedom. It's hard to do, because no one wants everyone to know they've made a bad choice in a mate. They don't want pity or scorn. But breaking the silence often has to be done to get free.

Victims feel they have been living a lie by staying with the abuser, that people will think they are liars for letting everyone believe it was all right when it wasn't. But, it is not your responsibility to tell people what has been happening until you are ready and if you need to. Those who understand will praise and support you in telling.

This may sound like a silly question to the outside observer, but it isn't. It seems like surely a person would know if they were being abused. There would be hitting and cruelty, obvious cruelty.

Not necessarily. Some of the most accomplished abusers never touch their victims. Remember the movie What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? The sister played by Bette Davis relentlessly abuses the sister played by Joan Crawford. It's blatant and subtle together. And we discover at the end of the movie that the Joan Crawford character has been abusing also, but in the most subtle and secret of ways.

Emotional abuse can be so subtle, so hidden, that those outside the abuse circle find it impossible to believe. The people inside that circle may even doubt their own perceptions, partly because the abuse is subtle and partly because the abuser helps them doubt. He insists on it. Part of his abuse is planting and nurturing self-doubt in his victims.

So how can you tell if it's happening to you? If any of the following are happening, you need to wonder. If several are happening, abuse is what it is.

* You automatically feel a sense of dread, fear, or unease when a certain person comes home from work, or enters the room. Or you have a nonspecific sense of needing to protect yourself or others when they approach

* You have recurring physical symptoms like headaches, fatigue, rashes, or diarrhea at or after times of interaction with or proximity to certain people. For example, before or during trips with them you experience symptoms you do not experience when travelling with others.

* Someone else in your family is being abused. If someone close to you is being abused, you are being emotionally abused. You are experiencing feelings of fear, hate, shame, powerlessness, guilt, and remorse, all created in you by the abuser. Abusing a child is a favorite way for abusers to abuse indirectly a parent or grandparent.

* You find your circle of activity getting smaller and smaller. You are becoming isolated progressively from your friends and loved ones. You no longer do many of the things that once gave you pleasure. You don't go where you used to.

* You notice that you do not feel as competent as you did before you began associating with or began a relationship with a certain person.

* You don't take as good care of yourself as you did before the relationship.

* You don't express your opinions or feelings as much as you did before. It doesn't seem safe, they now seem unimportant, or would only cause trouble.

-Abuse is systematic. It's not a rude episode, or being gauche or ignorantly doing something someone else doesn't appreciate, though abusers will claim that's all it is, and that it's just an isolated incident. It is repetitive and cyclical. So, look for recurrent themes or situations. Do you find yourself repeatedly involved in the same kinds of unpleasant situations with vulnerable others.

-I believe abuse is an addiction. It's giving away a feeling you don't want to someone who is vulnerable by creating the feeling in them. Then, they feel worse, and you feel better.

-Abuse tends to be multigenerational, passed down from parent to child by example and experience. If you've been abused, you've learned how to do it. You have a choice as to whether you will continue the passing down to the next generation of the abuse system.

-Abusers avoid taking responsibility for their own behavior. They say they lost control, blew up, went off, didn't mean to, weren't thinking, don't know why they did it, or "it wasn't the real me," etc. All of these responses are denials of personal responsibility for one's own behavior.

-Abuse is almost always contextual. Abusers behave badly in environments where there is secrecy and vulnerable victim availability. Abusers do not tend to try to abuse their boss, the policeman on the corner, or anyone they perceive as more powerful than they are.

-Abusers have "selective amnesia" they "don't remember' doing a lot of the cruel and oppressive acts they've committed. They can express apparently genuine outrage at the abuse behaviors of others, while not recognizing the similarities to their own behaviors.

-Abusers shed "crocodile tears." They are "sorry" briefly, and then quickly want their victims to feel sorry for them. They may lack real empathy for others, but pretend to experience it because they thing it's expected, or that it works for them to keep their victims available.

-Abusers are self involved, and they want everyone else focusing on them. They think all issues are really about them, not about their victims.

-Abusers are dishonest. They live a life of pretense.

Some clues:

1. Were you abused as a child/teen by a parent or other relative?

2. How do you deal with emotional discomfort? Do you use addictive behaviors to change your emotional/physical state? (gambling, shopping, food bingeing, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes.)

3. Do you come home to a happy family, and find that your children are crying within five minutes of your arrival, or someone is "in trouble" ?

4. Is your family dinner table a place where children are regularly punished or reprimanded, and you find it necessary to send them away, or make them unhappy during or after the meal? Are there other repeated events or activities where similar trouble happens: trips, outings, holidays, bedtime, shopping, etc.

5. Are your spouse or children afraid of you?

6. Do you force or coerce affection or companionship, or sex on any family member or love interest?

7. Have you ever raped anyone? Had rough sex without the other person's complete agreement or consent? Have you made your partner cry because of your physical treatment, or by denying them something or forcing or coercing them about something?

8. Is there a cycle of building tension, blow up on your part, denial of responsibility on your part, admission of guilt, repentance, and then a "honeymoon period" afterward, that repeats in your home or relationship?

9. Do you think you are responsible for making your significant other "shape up" behaviorally or otherwise? Are you jealous? Do you restrict the activities or range of movement of your significant other?

10. Do you have rules and regulations for your significant other or children that causes them to fear you or fear displeasing you? Do you withhold or deny them privileges or opportunities unnecessarily? Do you get satisfaction from doing so?

11. Has your significant other restricted her interaction with friends and family in order to avoid displeasing you or angering you?

12. Is your spouse or are your children depressed?

13. Is there one child of yours that gets more punishment from you and more criticism than the others?

14. Do you find that tension builds in your household, but is cleared when a big fight occurs, or when someone is punished?

15. Are you dishonest with yourself about your own motives in disciplining your children or trying to control your spouse?

17. Have you ever caused repeated physical injury to your significant other or child "by accident?"

18. Do you behave as courteously and respectfully toward your family members or significant other as you do to your boss at work?

Q: I've been away from the person who abused me for some time, but I get flashbacks, and sometimes memories come unbidden and overwhelm me or ruin good times now. What can I do to help me with this recurring problem?

A: Used to be that one just sort of had to wait until those internal responses to memories faded away over time, if they ever did. But there are some techniques now that can quickly and easily change unpleasant memories.

Go to http://www.changemaking.com and look around, play with the Tools and More Tools sections. If you have questions about anything there, email me and I'll answer them here or directly, if I can.

10. Learn from all your past experiences, whether they be twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago, and whether they were good or bad. In the case of good, notice what you did right, and if bad, notice what you needed that you didn't have available, and add it, then install it in your future. See my ebook, particularly chapter 16, for how to do it.

9. Strengthen your boundaries, and extend them outward further than they have been, because if you've been abused before, you haven't had strong enough ones, nor were they extended far enough. Have a buffer zone in your boundaries, a warning zone, far out from where you could be hurt. And enforce them.

8. Get distance from any boundary invader, and keep them that far away. You don't have to be close to those who are invasive. There are millions of people in the world who will treat you respectfully, hang out with some of them instead.

7. Focus on your own needs and make sure they are met. Don't be so nice to people who don't reciprocate or who take advantage.

6. Figure out precisely what you actually want in a partner or friend, and look for someone like that. Don't go for anything less. Don't even date anything less. If he/she needs some work to bring them up to standard, pass them by. Let someone else fix them. Go for one that works without tweaking.

5. Raise your standards for how you treat yourself, and for how you allow yourself to be treated. If you value yourself, and live like you do, others are more likely to value you, and treat you accordingly.

4. Remember that you are educating the people around you all the time as to how to treat you. If they've gotten the wrong idea about it, re-educate them. All you have to do to change their behavior is to change yours.

3. Practice saying no. Practice saying it looking in the mirror, say it 100 times a day. Practice with friends and co-workers, practice with your family, until it's easy. Then use it.

2. Remember Juliet's Rule: 1. Never start before you're ready. 2. People will do to you what you let them.

1. Trust your gut. If your gut tells you you're not comfortable being around someone, or with their treatment of you, get away, and stay away. You don't need to be able to understand it or explain it. Trust your early warning systems. They're there to protect you.

This site is here to be a resource center for people who are interested in the subject of abuse. It is for everyone who wants to stop abuse, prevent abuse, recover from abuse, get away from an abuser, protect someone who is being abused, or simply wants to make the world a safer, kinder place.

If you know about resources or information that you think should be here, please email me and tell me about it.

Disclaimer: This is a resource site only. The list owner disavows any responsiblilty for material that may appear on linked sites. The list owner is not a therapist, and does not present herself as such. She is a researcher and personal coach, and all information here should be read and used with that understanding.